“Why would I be when I already live in paradise?” she asked, gesturing round the room.
I wanted to laugh, but stayed silent instead. Outside, a bayou symphony played in the dark, creatures out there swimming in the water, brushing against vines like the ones that had given me a second chance.
This was it, then. I had to make the right decisions tonight, before the family caught up to me. Meeting Philippe had changed my patterns, changed everything.
“Don’t worry,” I told Amari. “I intend to take care of my business before dawn.”
The witch reached under the table once again, then handed me a knife with a long, gleaming blade, almost as if she had already seen that I would be needing it very, very soon.
5
Amari put the protection spell on me before I walked down the road, just to set a bit of distance between her cabin and what I knew would be tracking me down before too long.
In addition to Amari’s knife, I had taken Philippe’s revolver with me as insurance. Since I had tested my powers out only tonight, a firearm felt right in my hands. I had the feeling I was capable of much more than wrestling a strong man into submission or putting that red-eyed attacker back on its heels, but this was no time to get cocky.
After I settled into a crouch on the side of the moon-washed road, my back to one of the trees that clawed over me with branches and Spanish moss, I wasn’t certain how long I waited. But it was a while, because the sky was paling now, and my boots were tapping at me, as if counting down to the time when they would take over, shutting my body down so they could take their nourishment from me.
Yet I had told Amari that I wouldn’t be returning until my hunter had come to me or I needed a bed to slump in.
As I waited, I tried to think of the reasons I might have had for leaving Amari’s cabin and striking out for the city the previous nights. Had one of my unfiltered memories come back to me, prompting me to pursue my family before they reached me? Had I remembered that they would come to wherever I was and I wanted to get to them first, before I forgot again?
Any way about it, the boots had a price, and I would gladly pay it, not only because of the burns that returned whenever I removed the boots, but because I feared I would be a nearly mindless revenant again, just as I had been before Amari had saved me . . .
As the bayou sounds halted for a moment, chills rolled over me. My boots clutched at my legs, and I kept to my crouch, surveying the road, looking to the darkness beyond the trees to see if my attacker was near.
I should have known how this hunter operated, though, and when I slowly looked above me to the bole of the oak I was leaning against, I saw those red night-vision eyes against a black mask.
It had slid down the trunk to get to me, and it was aiming a Taser again.
Before I could think about what sort of balance and stealth that had taken, my body blipped into action: I raised the revolver, shooting to kill. But the hunter was faster. The thing dodged the bullet, yet not all the way—it clipped the Taser, sending the stunner flying once more.
When the hunter used a hand to clamp onto my arm and then flipped me to my back, the breath blasted out of my lungs, my sight scrambling. All I knew was that I’d let go of the revolver, and I had only the long knife that Amari had given to me.
I went for my side, where the blade was hanging in a sheath from my belt loop, but again, the hunter anticipated me, stepping on my arm.
It spoke in an electronically altered voice. “Don’t fight, Lilly. The Meratoliages have been searching for you quite a long time. Just come along.”
An accent like mine. “Are you one of the family?”
A tight laugh. “There are more of us all the time. We’ve had to activate candidates we would have never considered before you brought the family to its knees.” It paused. “All we want, Lilly, is to have you with us again.”
“So you can put me to death.” I remembered the bonfire, the flames licking at me, the eyes of my family leader as she watched.
“No,” the hunter said. “If that was what we had in store for you, I would not have brought Tasers.”
I was still dwelling on the “in store for you” portion. Perhaps fighting wasn’t my best option at the moment. “If I went with you, what would happen?”
The hunter shook its head, as if it were telling me that it wouldn’t divulge that information. And as if it pitied me as well.
The pity rankled, and my boots dug into my flesh. A memory stirred, restless, wanting to bloom.
Were the boots trying to help me access a helpful memory? Were they giving up a bit of themselves for me?
I grasped part of the memory. A videotape I had found as a young girl. Meratoliages, gathered round a table, where a dead member of my family lay, his chest open as they prodded and poked . . .
The truth struck me—my family wished to see if I had deformities? They had given up on me and wanted to learn from my mistakes, so that they would never be repeated in another member as they pursued their dark arts and tried to raise the dragon to life again.
But I wanted to live, even if it was merely night by night.
I called upon my muscle memory to save me, swinging my body so that I somehow got one of my legs over one of the hunter’s, my other leg between its legs. Then I scissored, bringing the thing down with an electronic grunt of surprise.
It didn’t take long for it to hop to a crouch, yet I was already in one, my knife in hand.
Unfortunately, it had accessed nunchakus, and as it spun them and swung them over one shoulder and grasped the bottom handle in preparation to knock me out, I braced myself to duck—
A shot rang out, and the next thing I knew, blood slapped my chest and face, and one of the attacker’s arms was missing.
I dove to the ground as the hunter’s electric scream overrode all the night sounds. When I looked up again, it was writhing on the ground, clutching what was left of its arm.
I looked over to see Philippe with a shotgun still aimed at the hunter.
Amari, I thought. Was she okay?
He stalked forward, slowly and methodically, talking to me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. What did you do to Amari?”
“Only borrowed this baby from her. Maybe tied her up and gagged her, too, so she can’t make any spells that might’ve stopped me. But she’s fine. Me, too. Thanks for asking.”
The hunter was groaning, and I was shocked to see that it was still trying to grasp for the nunchakus it had dropped on the ground.
Automatically, I flung my knife at it, and the blade stuck into its neck. Dead shot.
It stopped all movement, but next thing I knew, Philippe had put the shotgun on me. I smiled at him, hardly surprised. Money was money.
“How did you—?” I started.
“Wake up and grab her shotgun without her seeing? Cher, I played possum for as long as I could. I waited and waited until after Amari rolled me to the side of the floor and then went about fixing some dinner. Or maybe the witch knew I was destined to get away and she didn’t bother to fight fate.”
But there was another option—what if Philippe was part of my protection spell and that was the reason Amari hadn’t stopped him?
“What are you destined to do now?” I asked him. “Take me with you so you can collect the reward money from the Meratoliages?”
He didn’t say anything. I realized at that moment that Philippe Angier needed the money for his family, but he wasn’t a true-born mercenary.
“If you bring me to them,” I said, “they’re going to kill me. They’re going to tear me apart to see why I didn’t work.”
“That money could help my maman for the rest of her life.”
“I understand.” I saw the revolver not three feet from me.
“You don’t understand, Lilly. You—”
Just as I was about to spring for the revolver, his shotgun went off again. But he hadn’t aimed at me.
When I looked behind me, I saw the hunter sprawled on its back, a hole in its chest. We Meratoliages don’t stop, I thought, but Philippe had certainly put a halt to this one.
Just to make certain of that, I stood, went to it, and peeled off its night-vision goggles and its mask. A fall of sandy hair, just like mine, spilled to the ground. She even looked a bit like me.
I dug under her black turtleneck, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I turned to him. “I suppose I should thank you, but I suspect you were only clearing the way to the money for yourself. You saw in your vision where the Meratoliages are?”
“Yes. And I would’ve taken you to them right away, except I thought those boots were giving you more powers than a human should have. But it wasn’t the boots at all.”
“No,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t.”
Even though he had the shotgun trained on me now, I wasn’t about to go with him. I threw caution to the winds and called on my muscle memory to get me through this.
I made a low run at him, as if I were going to tackle his legs, but instead I sprang, jarring the shotgun up. He didn’t fire it as the weapon flew out of his grip, and as I spun and kicked up, my boot thudded against his head. He crashed to the ground. I pinned him as I’d done before.
All he did was smile, yet it was a sad one. “The Meratoliages won’t stop. There’ll always be someone coming after you.”
I could see his face more clearly, now that dawn was threatening. Beautiful gray eyes and a mouth that looked . . .
I don’t know the reason I did it—I wondered whether I often gave in to impulse—but I bent down, pressing my lips to his. Warm, soft. My boots seemed to twine round themselves even more, as if hugging themselves. I felt the same sensation in my belly until I pulled away.
We locked gazes, and in that endless second, I knew that he was too good to trade me in for money.
“You walk away,” I said. “Hitch a ride to the main road. If you stay away from me, you might even get your bike back someday.”
“I’d better.” His voice was a whisper, as if he’d been affected by the kiss. But when he assumed that arrogant smile, I knew he would never say it aloud. “You’re a real survivor, Lilly.”